Abstract We are interested in characterising the commutative rings for which a 1-tilting cotorsion pair ( 𝒜 , 𝒯 ) {(\mathcal{A},\mathcal{T})} provides for covers, that is when the class 𝒜 {\mathcal{A}} is a covering class. We use Hrbek’s bijective correspondence between the 1-tilting cotorsion pairs over a commutative ring R and the faithful finitely generated Gabriel topologies on R. Moreover, we use results of Bazzoni–Positselski, in particular a generalisation of Matlis equivalence and their characterisation of covering classes for 1-tilting cotorsion pairs arising from flat injective ring epimorphisms. Explicitly, if 𝒢 {\mathcal{G}} is the Gabriel topology associated to the 1-tilting cotorsion pair ( 𝒜 , 𝒯 ) {(\mathcal{A},\mathcal{T})} , and R 𝒢 {R_{\mathcal{G}}} is the ring of quotients with respect to 𝒢 {\mathcal{G}} , we show that if 𝒜 {\mathcal{A}} is covering, then 𝒢 {\mathcal{G}} is a perfect localisation (in Stenström’s sense [B. Stenström, Rings of Quotients, Springer, New York, 1975]) and the localisation R 𝒢 {R_{\mathcal{G}}} has projective dimension at most one as an R-module. Moreover, we show that 𝒜 {\mathcal{A}} is covering if and only if both the localisation R 𝒢 {R_{\mathcal{G}}} and the quotient rings R / J {R/J} are perfect rings for every J ∈ 𝒢 {J\in\mathcal{G}} . Rings satisfying the latter two conditions are called 𝒢 {\mathcal{G}} -almost perfect.